Khaled Hassan’s wife: The US State Department ignored us and did not ask Egypt to release him
27/5/2019
Luba Stakiev, wife of the Egyptian-American Khaled Hassan, who has been held in Tora prison, called on the US government to take quick action to release her husband, and accused the State Department of ignoring them and not answering their questions.
“The US State Department has not taken action on my husband’s case. I am sure they do not care about my husband’s conditions, so far they have not reported on his health, although he is sick and suffering psychologically,” Stakiev said in an interview on Al Jazeera TV Channel.
She added that her husband is an American citizen, the US embassy should take some measures to help him and demand that the Egyptian government release him.
Stakiev stressed that she and her children have not been able to visit her husband since his arrest a year and a half ago, and that they do not know anything about his situation. When she tried to visit him, Egyptian security forces detained her at Cairo airport and forced her to leave the country.
Khaled Hassan’s family presented documents proving that US officials have ignored his case since his forced disappearance in Egypt on January 8 last year.
Al-Jazeera.net received a copy of a letter sent by Khaled’s brother on January 19, 2018 to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Attorney General William Barr, informing them of his enforced disappearance and torture, without receiving an official response from them despite receiving an acknowledgment of receipt.
Official Response
Al Jazeera received a statement of a US State Department official saying the State Department urged the Egyptian government to treat all prisoners humanely, including Egyptian-American Khaled Hassan, who was living in New York before being forcibly hidden by Egyptian authorities on January 8, 2018.
The US official said Washington conveyed its strong protest to Cairo over the way Egypt treated Khaled Hassan.
The State Department statement said Hassan was receiving all necessary services from the US consulate in Cairo, and that officials visited him in Tora prison several times, most recently on the 23rd of this month.
The response of the US official came after Al Jazeera.net broadcasted a promotional video for an investigation prepared by its journalists. The full text of the investigation will be published along with a video and audio recording on Wednesday evening.
The investigation examines the circumstances of Hassan’s arrest in Alexandria a year and a half ago. He was subjected to the most severe forms of torture and sexual abuse, forced to confess on fabricated charges, including collaboration with a foreign country, joining ISIS, financing terrorist organizations, and planning to bomb military installations.
Source: Aljazeera.net (Original Content -Arabic)
